The song is a small piece of science fiction masquerading as a traditional song about what initially sounds like a pagan festival. Imagining a kind of peasantry that's survived the nuclear holocaust, the song is a "carol" for a holiday in which all of the corpses and dead crops from radiation sickness are piled in a ceremonial mound to "keep the devil down."

By the end of the song, it is revealed that the "devil" is the word for the powerful people who've retreated to underground bunkers, and that by heaping the dead on top of the doors to the bunkers, they'll be kept in "hell."